The wizard waved again and the panther was gone, leaving only a cloud of smoke that rolled up the sky and dissipated.
Dumery stared, enthralled, as the performance continued.
To his right, Dessa was somewhat less impressed. Dumery could hear her humming quietly to herself.
When the wizard conjured a naked man out of a seashell Dessa giggled; Dumery ignored her.
To his left his father was dozing off in the bright sunlight. Beyond him Derath and Doran were loudly whispering crude jokes to each other.
Dumery’s lips tightened.
How could they fail to appreciate such marvels? How had he ever been born into such a family of clods?
Finally, the wizard finished his performance, bowed, and then began climbing up that invisible staircase in the sky again. He mounted higher, and higher, and higher, while behind him the blue rakes emerged again-guided, this time, by merely human hands.
Dumery paid no attention to the rakes, nor the servants wielding them, nor the scenery being hastily erected for the play that would conclude the day’s show.
He watched the wizard as he climbed upward into the sky, out over the side of the arena, passing fifty or sixty feet above the family of Grondar the Wainwright two boxes over, eighty feet above the outer wall of the Arena, and on into the distance until he vanished.
Once the wizard was really, truly gone Dumery waited impatiently for the play to be over, paying no attention to the clever dialogue-after all, even when he could make out the words, half the time he didn’t understand the jokes, which usually seemed to involve sex. His knowledge of sex was still very limited and entirely theoretical.
The sun was scarcely above the western rim of the Arena when the actors finally took their bows and the crowd called out polite applause.
As they were marching down through the stone corridors, on their way back to the street, the elder Doran remarked, “Well, Dumery, I hope you enjoyed that. Seemed like a good way to mark your birthday.”
Dumery nodded, not really listening, and totally unaware of the annoyed look his lack of enthusiasm received.
“When I turned twelve,” his father continued a moment later, “I didn’t get any trip to the Arena, let me tell you! I spent the day in the hold of a ship, cleaning up the mess where a storm at sea had broken open a dozen crates of pottery and herbs.”
Dumery nodded. “You own that ship now,” he pointed out. He had heard the story before-several times, in fact.
“Damn right I do!” Doran replied. “I was lucky, and I worked hard for it, and the gods blessed me-I own that ship. And if she’s still afloat when I die, she’ll go to your brother Doran, becausehe was lucky, and was born into the right household. You boys don’t appreciate what you’ve got, because you’ve always had it, you didn’t have to work for it.”
“I appreciate it, Dad,” Derath interrupted.
“No, you don’t,” the elder Doran snapped. “Maybe you think you do, but you don’t really, because you’ve never been poor. Your mother and I saw to that!”
Derath and Doran the Younger exchanged glances.
“You’ve never had to work for anything in your lives,” their father continued, and Dumery wondered whether he was complaining, or boasting, or both.
They reached the street and turned north in the golden twilight, joining the loose-packed throng that was strolling up Arena Street, a hundred sandals slapping the hard-packed dirt in a patter like falling rain. Shopkeepers were lighting their storefront torches, and the familiar, friendly scent of burning oil reached Dumery’s nose. As a rule he never noticed the city’s ubiquitous odor, which had been a constant in his life since the day he was born, but the smoky smell of the torches seemed to emphasize that distinctive mingling of spices and ordure that always flavored Ethshar’s air. As he remembered the wizard’s performance, the fading light and that complex odor suddenly seemed magical, transforming the familiar avenue into something exotic and wonderful.
“Never worked a day, any of you,” his father muttered suddenly, breaking the spell cast by the sunset and smoke.
“Andthey never will!” Dumery said, annoyed, jerking a thumb at his brothers.
Doran of Shiphaven looked at him, startled, then back at Doran and Derath, and then at Dumery again.
“No, they won’t,” he agreed. “And I don’t suppose Dessa will, either, if she’s careful.”
Dessa threw him a startled glance, but then went back to watching the shops as they passed, ignoring the rest of the conversation.
“Just me,” Dumery said, trying to sound flippant, rather than resentful.
“Well,” his father said, “I don’t know. We could find you a way out of working, I’m sure.”
“Oh? Like what?” Dumery replied, making less of an effort to hide his bitterness. “Doran’s getting the ships, and Derath’s getting the money, and Dessa’s getting the house-what do I get, if not an apprenticeship fee? What else is left? And every apprentice I ever heard of works hard enough!”
“Maybe we could dower you...” Doran began.
Dumery made a rude noise.
“As far as I know,” he said, ignoring his father’s annoyance at the interruption, “I don’t want to get married, let alone like that!”
Doran said, “You’ll want to get married when you’re older...”
“Oh, I suppose I will,” Dumery interrupted, “but I don’t want some fancy arranged marriage where I don’t have any say about who or when or what we’ll do afterward.”
Doran nodded. “I can see that,” he said. He kept his eyes straight ahead, not looking at Dumery.
They walked on in silence for a few moments. Doran and Derath dropped back a bit, slowed by their horseplay, and Dessa dawdled as well, looking in the shop windows, so that Dumery and his father were able to talk in relative privacy, without being overheard by the rest of the family.
“Maybe,” Doran suggested, “we could arrange for you to stay with the family business-not as an owner, of course, because we’ve already settled it all on Dorie, but as a manager, perhaps. Something that would pay well.”
“And wouldn’t have me hauling on ropes? Thanks, Dad, but I don’t think so. It’s bad enough being the younger brother now; I don’t think I want to spend the rest of my life being Dorie’s kid brother, and having to do what he tells me or starve.”
“You always were stubborn,” Doran said, “and too damn proud to take orders from anyone.”
They walked on, and a block later Doran shrugged and said, “Then I can’t think of anything except an apprenticeship.”
“I know,” Dumery said. “I’ve been thinking about it for weeks myself, and I couldn’t think of anything else. And I don’t really mind that much. I’m still lucky, just as you said-it’s just Dorie and Derath and Dessa were luckier.”
Doran could think of no reply to that.
After a moment, Dumery added, “I’m not afraid of work, anyway.”
“Well, that’s good,” Doran said, in a satisfied tone. “Have you given much thought to what sort of an apprenticeship you want? I’m sure we could get you aboard any ship you like, if you’d care to be a pilot, or to work toward a captaincy.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think so,” Dumery replied. “I’m not that interested in going to sea.”
“Well, there’s bookkeeping, or chandlery, or we could apprentice you to a merchant of some sort. Had you thought about any of those?”
“I’ve thought about them all, Dad,” Dumery said, stating what he considered to be the obvious. “I know what I want to do.”
“Oh?” Doran was slightly amused by his son’s certitude. It was a trait the boy had had since infancy, always knowing what he wanted and being determined to get it, no matter what it took. “And what’s that?”
Dumery looked up at his father and said, quite seriously, “I want to be a wizard.”
